


This Midnight

by Zaxal



Category: Arrested Development
Genre: Comfort/Angst, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 14:09:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11014992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaxal/pseuds/Zaxal
Summary: They aren't okay, but at least they're not okay together.





	This Midnight

**Author's Note:**

> For a one-line prompt on Tumblr: "Have you ever wanted to hate someone?"
> 
> Gob is 18, and Michael is 16.

Michael hated being home. People at school, customers at the banana stand – they were all looking out for themselves, interested in their own business, hardly even glancing sideways at him until he volunteered himself for their attention. He could be braced for it, then. Prepared for the worst.

The family wasn't that different. Most of them were absorbed in their own little lives, too busy to pay attention to anyone but themselves. His father had the Bluth Company, his mother had a social life that revolved around one-upping Lucille Two and her other 'friends' as often as she possibly could. Lindsay was balancing her dating life on top of cheating her way through school, and Buster... Well. Buster tended to fall off Michael's radar the way he fell off everyone but their mother's until there was a "Hey, brother," in his ears and hands on his shoulders.

But they all pulled him into their respective drama without hesitation, the very second they needed to instead of thinking about how Michael would prefer to be left alone.

Gob was the outlier. All of the siblings fought and fussed, but Gob directed his attention at Michael more than anyone else in the family. Hitting, hugging, general harassment. And, unlike the others, Michael couldn't just lock him out of the room when he'd had enough.

"Mikey?"

Michael stared at the windows in their room at the darkened sky. He wasn't sure what time it was, only that it was too damn late and Gob apparently couldn't sleep either. " _Mikey_ ," Gob hissed louder, apparently intending to wake him up if he wasn't already awake.

He heard an angry huff, the only chance he had to brace himself before Gob's bed creaked and something – some knickknack off the bedside table – flew through the room and hit the back of his head.

Michael flopped over to glare at his brother before picking up the toy and flinging it back at him way harder than was strictly necessary. "What the _fuck_ , Gob?" he whispered back.

"Ow," Gob complained, sitting up and searching with his hands, but apparently his one piece of ammunition had bounced off his face and landed somewhere else and he didn't feel like looking for it. "I just wanted to talk."

"I was asleep."

"No, you weren't," Gob shot back. "You were ignoring me."

"Close enough."

"Come on, Michael, if you're not sleeping, why can't we talk?"

"Because we're not a couple of girls at a sleepover."

Gob made a disgruntled noise and rolled over so his back faced Michael. He fell into a silence for which Michael felt inexplicably guilty. "Hey, I didn't mean it like that."

"Whatever."

"Gob, don't-"

Gob curled up tighter in his blanket with another noise that sounded close to a growl. Michael rolled his eyes and contemplated turning back around and staring out the window again, but... talking didn't _hurt_. Usually.

Making a slight concession, Michael slid out from beneath his covers and padded across the space to the other bed, sitting on the edge of it.

"Go _away_."

"No. What d'you wanna talk about?"

"I don't. Jesus, Michael. It was- it was a joke."

Michael fought off a long-suffering sigh. Thanks to Gob scooting to the far, far side of the bed, he had barely enough room to squeeze onto the small mattress, laying on top of Gob's covers. Gob kicked at him, the movement hampered by their configuration so barely any force actually hit him.

"Is it about graduation?" That was in a few months, so maybe-

"Ugh," Gob groaned. "No. Not even a little."

"So you are gonna talk to me."

Gob tried to muscle him off, turning again on his back and nudging. Michael, somehow more curious than annoyed, sat up and swung himself over his brother, frowning down at him from his hands and knees. Gob sulked visibly.

That alarmed Michael more than anything else. Gob usually brightened when Michael was this close unless they were boyfighting.

"Tell me?" Michael allowed a soft pleading into his voice.

Gob was weak to it, his own expression faltering as he stopped glaring at the ceiling and actually allowed himself to look at his younger brother. "Have you ever wanted to hate someone? But you just couldn't?"

Michael nodded slightly. He wanted to hate most of the family most of the time. They dragged him into their petty drama without thinking about what it might do to him, how stressful it could be. They'd been doing it for as long as he could remember. But no matter how stupid the problems, how many awkward situations he was expected to be a part of for someone else, he couldn't... stop loving them?

"Who?" Gob asked, surprised and sounding almost hurt.

"Not you," Michael answered, lied. The last time he'd really wanted to hate Gob had been about twenty minutes ago when Gob had first whispered his name. "Why?"

"And you won't hate me?"

"Depends," he said warily. "What are you thinking of doing that might make me hate you?"

"It's not what I'm gonna do, Mikey. It's... what Dad's gonna do."

Michael frowned. "I mean, he hasn't made me hate you yet. And he's tried."

"Yeah, but I've _been around_ , guy."

"Well, where are you going?" Michael demanded more heatedly than he meant to, feeling some strange anxiety when Gob wouldn't just tell him. Gob's expression began to shutter again, another wall starting to come between them. " _Why_ ," he started, switching tracks, "do you think I'll hate you?"

"Dad's kicking me out at the end of summer."

"What?" Michael almost mouthed it, his voice was so soft, caught in his throat.

"He took me aside a few nights ago, said that if I don't have a job – a ' _real_ ' one – and if I'm not in college, then I'm out. And I, I know what you're thinking, just 'go to college.' But it's not that simple. I mean-"

"So... we'll find you a job." Even as Michael said it, he knew it wouldn't work. Gob didn't work in the banana stand, both because he didn't want to and because no one particularly wanted him there. He couldn't imagine someone who wasn't family hiring him.

"Just gonna give up on school right away, huh?" Gob's mouth twitched into a frown, but Michael knew, perhaps better than anyone in the family, that Gob wouldn't last even a full semester before he gave up going to class, stopped trying to do homework, and dropped out. In fact, Michael was pretty sure Gob was only graduating high school on time because of his willingness to acquire illegal paraphernalia requested by the teachers.

Not to mention there was the whole... reading thing that Gob had never been good at. The first time he'd seen a Q on a Queen in a deck of cards, Gob hadn't known it was a real letter. It might have been more endearing if he hadn't been 9 at the time.

"It doesn't seem like your kind of place," Michael admitted reluctantly.

"A fraternity might be," Gob said, almost sounding hopeful.

"Still. Have to go to class-"

" _Ugh_."

"-do homework-"

" _No_."

"...You see where I'm going with this," Michael guessed.

Gob nodded with another huff, eyes cutting to the side as his frown deepened. "I want to hate him."

"At least he's giving you the summer." Michael couldn't help but defend their dad. It was ingrained into him, that things could be worse, and they should be grateful that they weren't.

"Yeah." Gob continued to sound miserable. "The whole summer to ride my ass about what a failure I am." His jaw tightened, body going stiff beneath Michael's as he tried to get his emotions under control. "He- he doesn't do this to you because you're _perfect_ Michael, the kid they wanted. Lindsay and Buster, they wanted-"

"Hey, hey, they-" Okay, he couldn't lie and say that they'd _wanted_ Gob, but he was too far into the sentence to back out completely from trying to comfort his brother. "They don't know how lucky they are," he finished lamely.

Gob scoffed. "I mean, duh. Look at me. I'm great." He didn't sound completely sure of that, himself.

"And I'm not perfect. They just... think that." Michael sighed, exhaustion settling on him like a weight. His own gaze wandered away, his bottom lip drawn between his teeth. "No, they don't even... They push me to be perfect, and I- I do it. As much as I can. And one day? I'm not gonna be able to do it anymore."

"Of course you will," Gob said, his voice more serious, more certain. "You're _Michael_."

Michael was shaking slightly, both from the effort of holding himself up and with the knowledge that when their parents found out his weaknesses, he'd be no better off than Gob. If he ever stopped pushing, they... They would hate him for misleading them, for not being an obvious waste of time and energy before they spent so much of both on him.

"Hey, Mikey. It's okay."

"No, it's not."

"It will be, right?" Michael glanced down at him, annoyed, but Gob was watching him back with a steady earnestness that was, unfortunately, endearing. "No matter what they think. We'll have each other."

It was a childish way to look at things, but Michael found himself nodding. "No matter what happens. Yeah, of course we'll have each other."

Gob cracked a tentative smile, and before Michael could think better of it, he leaned down and brushed his lips over his brother's. It had just... happened. And Michael was too tired to follow it up with his usual lines of protests and excuses.

When he leaned back up, Gob's smile had widened into that warm, fond expression that looked as if he could start glowing.

Michael nudged him, and Gob shuffled until they could lay next to each other, Michael's head nuzzled beneath his brother's, breathing with him. He didn't intend to stay in Gob's bed for the night, but for now?

For now, this was fine.


End file.
